"You’ll know quick enough. Take my advice and disappear. It will be hard for you to disprove complicity." It was enough to give me the tip. Within five minutes I had the whole story from one of my fellow "county detectives," who had seen the warrant. Blackie and the Old Man had got Nina’s mother to make an affidavit that her daughter was only seventeen years old. Steger had joyfully sworn out a warrant against Benson, charging him with rape in the second degree—states prison, ten years. In the language of the Tombs, they "had the goods on him." There is no getting away from this charge if the girl is under eighteen. The question of whether or not she has "led a previously chaste life," has no bearing in rape cases. It did not take me long to reach a telephone. Benson had left the Teepee. As the detective was on the way with the warrant, I told Guiseppe to take Nina at once to the Café Boulevard—not to wait a minute! I luckily caught Norman at the club, just as he was calling for his mail. The fact that I was "compounding a felony," did not occur to me till hours afterwards. I reached the café and transferred Guiseppe and Nina to a private room, before Norman arrived. He was certainly in a belligerent frame of mind when he did come. He had brought his family lawyer with him, a pompous old man, with gray mutton-chop whiskers and a tendency towards apoplexy. His dignity was sadly ruffled by having been drawn into a vulgar criminal case. Norman and I went with him into another room for a council of war. He was of course ready, he told us, to act as his client directed, but he felt it his duty to point out that he was an older man than we, with some knowledge of worldly affairs. He hoped that I with my familiarity with the criminal courts might point out some more satisfactory solution than the marriage which his client in a nobly Quixotic spirit was contemplating. We must allow an older and more experienced man to say that marriage was a serious—if not actually a sacerdotal affair. It was a gamble under the best circumstances. And in this case, socially so inexpedient, financially so disproportionate, and personally—well—so unprecedented it would be.... He hemmed and hawed, ruffled his scanty hair and patted his paunch—in short could not I offer a suggestion. "Go ahead and talk," Norman growled. "Get it out of your system." "They could skip to Canada, temporarily," I said. "If we drop the case against Blackie, they’ll squash this warrant." The lawyer nodded approval.